Thread: The Jackass Whisperer

Hylander wrote,

McKinley,

From the book that I recently read about McKinley. This is from the book.

On the morning of October 29, 1901, Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President McKinley, was pacing the condemned cell awaiting his coming doom. Barely five hours afterward his body was lying in the prison burying ground with acid and quicklime heaped about it to hasten its disintegration. By evening the destroying agencies had done their work and nothing but a memory, execrated and abhorred, remained to the world of the man whose act sent it into mourning.

Has anyone ever heard of this method being used after an execution? And why it was done this way? After all the body was buried on the prison grounds. It would seem futile for people to try and dig up the body for some macabre reason.

Another passage 3 pages latter, after the description of the autopsy preformed.

The only thing that was left to do in the passing of Czolgosz was to bury his remains. The body was placed in a coffin case and loaded on a wagon, which carried it by a roundabout way to the prison cemetery. Another wagon, going by another route, had brought quicklime and acids to the graveyard. The precautions taken had been successful in avoiding a crowd, and only a few persons saw the objectionable scene which followed when the coffin case was opened, lowered into the grave and quicklime and acids dumped in. Earth was shoveled on quickly and the grave filled up.

Has anyone ever heard of this method being used after an execution? And why it was done this way? After all the body was buried on the prison grounds. It would seem futile for people to try and dig up the body for some macabre reason.

Will float this question again.

Does the method of burial seem odd considering that the state was responsible for burying it? Or has anyone ever heard of this method having been used more often when interring the body of a murderer?

Shall add to this thread a book to be sought after if a person is interested in the money question, inflation, fiat vs a standard, and the corrupt forces as a result of fiat currencies.

LIFE AND WORK OF GARFIELD by Ridpath 1881

A great read with many speeches in entirety by Pres. Garfield.

"It is my clear conviction that the most formidable danger with which the country is now threatened is a large increase in the volume of paper money.

Shall we learn nothing from experience? Shall the warnings of the past be unheeded?"

Concerning the inflationary pressures brought about by the hum of the printing presses and the fiat. From Garfield,

"But some one may say: This depreciation would fall upon capitalists and rich men, who are able to bear it."

"If this were true, it would be no less unjust. But unfortunately, the capitalists would suffer less than any other class. The new issue would be paid in the first place in large amounts to the creditors of the Government; it would pass from their hands before the depreciation had taken full effect, and, passing down step by step through the ranks of middle-men, the dead weight would fall at last upon the laboring classes in the incresed price of all the necessaries of life. It is well known that in a general rise of prices, wages are amongst the last to rise. This principle was illustrated in the report of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue for the year 1866. It is there shown that from the beginning of the war to the end of 1866, the average price of all commodities had risen ninety per cent. Wages, however, had risen but sixty per cent. A day's labor would purchase but two-thirds as many of the necessaries of life as it would before. That wrong is, therefore, inflicted on the laborer long before his income can be adjusted to his increased expenses. It was, in view of this truth, that Daniel Webster said, in one of his ablest speeches:

" ' Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money. This is the most effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man's field by the sweat of the poor man's brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, excessive taxation, these bear lightly on the happiness of the mass of the community, compared with a fraudulent currency and the robberies committed by depreciated paper.'

James Garfield on the floor of congress debating tariffs, and his views on free trade.

"What a market for our raw material, for our products, if we only would take the hand which Great Britain extends to us for free-trade between us!'

"For a single season, perhaps, his plan (The distinguished gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Tucker, had argued for free trade) might be profitable to the consumers of iron; but if his policy were adopted as a permanent one, it would reduce us to a merely agricultural people, whose chief business would be to produce the simplest raw materials by the least skill and culture, and let the men of brains of other countries do our thinking for us, and provide for us all products requiring the cunning hand of the artisan, while we would be compelled to do the drudgery for ourselves and for them.

"The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] is too good a logician not to see that the theory he advocates can only be realized in a state of universal peace and brotherhood among the nations; and, in developing his plan, he says:

" ' Commerce, Mr. Chairman, links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests, and thus creates that unity of our race which makes the resources of all of the property of each and every member. We can not if we would, and should not if we could, remain isolated and alone. Men under the benign influence of Christianity yearn for intercourse, for the interchange of thought and the products of thought as a means of common progress toward a nobler civilization.....

" ' Mr. Chairman, I can not, believe this is according to the Devine plan. Christianity bids us seek, in communion with our brethren of every race and clime, the blessings they can afford us, and to bestow in return upon them those with which our new continent is destined to fill the world.'

"This I admit, is a grand conception, a beautiful vision of the time when all nations shall dwell in peace; when all will be, as it were, one nation, each furnishing to the others what they can not profitably produce, and all working harmoniously together in the millennium of peace. If all kingdoms of the world should become the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, then I admit that universal free-trade ought to prevail. But that blessed era is yet too remote to be made the basis of the practical legislation of to-day. We are not yet members of the 'parliment of man, the federation of the world.' For the present, the world is divided into seperate nationalities; and that other divine command still applies to our situation ; 'He that provideth not for his own household has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel;' and, until that better era arrives, patriotism must supply the place of universal brotherhood.

"For the present Gortschakoff can do motre to the world by taking care of Russia. The great Bismark can accomplish more for his era by being, as he is, a German to the core, and promoting the welfare of the German Empire. Let Beaconsfield take care of England, and McMahon of France, and let Americans devote themselves to the welfare of America. When each does his best for his own nation to promote prosperity, justice, and peace, all will have done more for the world than if all had attempted to be cosmopolitans rather than patriots." [applause]

From a speech (just a partial as the whole speech is 4 or 5 pages of small print) given on the floor about 1874, by James Garfield.

"In view of the facts already set forth, the question returns, what is likely to be the effect of railway and other similar combinations upon our community and our political institutions? Is it true, as asserted by the British writer quoted above, that the state must soon recapture and control the railroads, or be captured and subjugated by them? Or do the phenomena we are witnessing indicate that general breaking-up of the social and political order of modern nations so confidently predicted by a class of philosophers whose opinions have hitherto made but little impression on the public mind?

"The analogy between the industrial condition of society at the present time and the feudalism of the Middle Ages is both striking and instructive.

"In the darkness and chaos of that period the feudal system was the first important step toward the organization of modern nations. Powerful chiefs and barons entrenched themselves in castles, and in return for submission and service gave to their vassals rude protection and ruder laws. But as the feudal chiefs grew in power and wealth they became the oppressors of their people, taxed and robbed them at will, and finally in their arrogance, defied the kings and emperors of the medieval states. From their castles, planted on the great thoroughfares, they practiced the most capricious extortions on commerce and travel, and thus gave the modern language the phrase, 'levy black-mail.'

"The consolidation of our great industrial and commercial companies, the power they wield and the relations they sustain to the state and to industry of the people, do not fall far short of Fourier's definition of commercial or industrial feudalism. The modern barons, more powerful than their military prototypes, own our greatest highways and levy tribute at will upon all of our vast industries. And as the old feudalism was finally controlled and subordinated only by the combined efforts of the kings and the people of the free cities and towns, so our modern feudalism can be subordinated to the public good only by the great body of the people, acting through the government by wise and just laws."

continued, last paragraph of the speech.

"I shall not now enter upon the discussion of methods by which this grand work of adjustment may be accomplished. But I refuse to believe that the genius and energy which have developed these tremendous forces will fail to make them, not the masters, but the faithful servants of society."

A poem from an old book that was written back in the 1870's after the crash of 17 September 1873. September seems to be notorious for such things?

Columbia, puzzeled what she should display
Of true home-make on her Centennial Day,
Asked Brother Jonathan; he scratched his head
Whittled awhile reflectively, and said,
'Your own invention, and your making, too?
Why any child could tell ye what to do;
Show 'em your Civil Service, and explain
How all men's loss is everybody's gain;
Show your new patent to increase your rent
By paying quarters for collecting cents;
Show your short cut to cure financial ills
By making paper collars current bills;
Show your new bleaching process, cheap and brief,
To wit: a jury chosen by the thief;
Show your State Legislatures; show your Rings;
And challenge Europe to produce such things
As high officials sitting half in sight
To share the plunder and to fix things right;
If that don't fetch her, why you only need
To show your latest style in martyrs,- Tweed:
She'll find it hard to hide her spiteful tears
At such advance in one poor hundred years!

This was written by James Russell Lowell. This concerns the collapse of the fiat greenbacks and their inflationary effects. I found the reference to the "Rings" interesting also.

Sarcasm or pity?

"Grant favored a resumption of specie payments but he was opposssed to contraction of the currency and disposed to accept greenbacks as a permanent part of the currency. When in 1871 the Supreme Court announced that greenbacks were not legal tender for obligations entered into prior to the emission of the notes, and even made the alarming suggestion that they were completely invalid,(1) the government promptly moved for a rehearing of the case. Two vacancies on the Supreme Bench afforded Grant a propitious opportunity to strengthen the Government's position. In Joseph P. Bradley and William Strong, Grant found jurists upon whose faith in the constitutionality of the greenbacks he could with confidence rely. He was not disappointed. In the second Legal Tender decision, Knox v. Lee, the Court reversed itself and sustained the constitutionality of the Civil War greenbacks: ten years later, in an even more sweeping decision, Julliard v. Greenman, it was to proclaim the right of the Government to issue legal tender even in time of peace."

(1) Hepburn v. Griswold

This is a passage from the book THE GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC published 1942 vol.2

If the first case was in 1871, then Grant had to stack the court in his favor and the case reheard, not sure of the date but guess it took a bit of time, say 1872, then in 1873 came the big crash. Coincidence?

Ever wonder why China will continue to buy our bonds? Perhaps this can shed a little light?

From a book on Garfield from 1881.

"There still remains to be considered the effect of depreciated currency on our trade with other nations. By raising prices at home higher than they are abroad, imports are largely increased beyond the exports; our coin must go abroad; or, what is far worse for us, our bonds, which have also suffered depreciation, and are purchased by foreigners at seventy cents on the dollar."

With that in mind, I ask is it high wages, or inflation that outsources jobs, and industries?

"and was so constructed as to enhance the importance of capital and overshadow the importance of toil. The system is one based upon a small volume of legal tender money, and the limit of this volume they would make as small as possible, in order that they may control it absolutely. Expansion by the issue of credit, not legal tender; contraction by withdrawal of credit. Expansion that they may sell the property of the producers, which they have taken in with the last contraction, and then contract again in order to wreck the enterprising and once more reap the harvest of their efforts."

From Senator R.F. Pettigrew around 1920 or so.

The index numbers on all the legal tender notes are recorded when released and taken off of the books when they are retired and disposed of. So the amount of legal tender notes in circulation is a known quantity. Credit on the other hand?